In the performance industry, stages and platforms must be assembled and disassembled in relatively brief periods of time by relatively unskilled individuals. The assembly of these stages and platforms can require complex diagrams aiding the proper assembly of the stages and platforms, can require tools for locking the separate parts together, and can require several individuals working together. In other industries, other structures must be assembled and disassembled with similar needs.
The process of assembling and disassembling stages and platforms has required the use of tools and lightweight components. Known assembly processes suffer from the drawback that tools slow the assembly and/or disassembly process and require the assemblers to carry tools, which can be broken and/or misplaced.
Magnetic couplings are used in some industries for affixing devices to surfaces. Primarily, these devices rely solely upon the strength of the magnetic attraction to hold the devices in place. These systems suffer from the drawback that the magnet has weaker lateral attractive force permitting the magnet to be moved up or down on a metal surface thereby permitting relative movement between the surfaces. Although this adjustability may be helpful in some applications, this adjustability is not helpful when the magnets must be placed in a specific position with a specific orientation to provide support necessary for stages and platforms.
Therefore, there is an unmet need to provide an interchangeable mechanism with interchangeable parts, which can be assembled without the use of tools, and may be attracted together to a specific position with a specific orientation thereby providing support designed for use with stages and platforms.